The MTA blew beyond its $300 million overtime budget by almost $70 million for the fiscal year that ended in June, The Post has learned.
Officials said Sandy recovery work accounted for about $20 million. That included repairing signals and stations in flooded tunnels as well as doing extensive track work.
Filling staff vacancies and replacing workers who are unavailable because they’re sick or for other reasons cost another $10 million. The agency faces a shortage of workers, but a spokesman said that financially it’s a mixed blessing.
While it leads to major overtime expenses, the agency does not have to spend money on health-care and other benefits that new hires would require.
The MTA will not have to pay the entire $70 million — the feds will reimburse it for $25 million.
The agency blames some of the overtime on programs that ultimately make travel easier for its customers — like Fastrack.
Instead of doing major repairs on active tracks — working between passing trains and causing delays at all times except rush hours — Fastrack closes down entire lines at night, when fewer people are riding.
That requires assigning more workers on overtime.
“A lot of what you see in this overage are examples of things like Fastrack, where it was a conscious decision — or Sandy recovery, where we had no choice,” said MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg.
He added, “Fastrack costs more in overtime but more than makes up for it in increased productivity.”
New York City Transit accounted for $54 million of the extra overtime — and more than 70 percent of that was for Sandy recovery work, including repairing the G-line tube under Newtown Creek.
The LIRR was over budget by $11 million, due to vacancies in its equipment-maintenance division and weather-related problems.
MTA headquarters, whose budget includes the MTA Police, was over by almost $1.8 million. Some of that was caused by assigning extra cops to venues served by its lines that attracted crowds for special events.
Bridges and Tunnels was the only agency that saw a drop in overtime.
To cut back on overtime, the report recommends steps including aggressively hiring new employees, reducing excessive sick time, improving safety to reduce worker accidents and doing more to protect the MTA’s equipment from weather.
Officials said the surprise overtime was more of a reminder that the budget should be updated as circumstances change — rather than an inability to control the amount of work that has to be done on overtime.